Ring-theoretic description of the norm-residue homomorphism

Recently, the norm-residue homomorphism has been the subject of intense discussions in the K-theoretic community following the proof of the Bloch-Kato conjecture by Voevodsky, Suslin and Rost (see Rost’s lecture at this year’s Arbeitstagung.) The goal of this post is to explain the norm-residue homomorphism in a down to earth ring-theoretic language.